This year Delhi experienced the highest minimum temperature in June the last forty years. A consequence of global warming, it’s a grim reminder that our buccaneering attitude towards environment and ecosystem has made climate change the most important issue today. While the IPCC’s claim that the Himalayan glaciers will melt by 2035 A.D. is a lot of hot air, that we earthlings have savaged the earth and environment cannot be denied.
At the cusp of the 20th century humanity started life on earth where about 50 per cent of its ancient forests were still intact. Though far from pristine, it was a sublime world of rolling seas, of land masses teeming with varied lives; vast expanses of wildlands sparsely peopled by original aboriginals who knew how to draw sustenance from nature’s bounties. Things are different today – the equilibrium has been cleaved.
A legacy with less than 20 per cent of its original forests intact and most of the readily available freshwater already spoken for and most of the wetlands and reef systems destroyed or degraded wouldn’t make our progenies happy. Plus they shall very likely inherit a stressed atmosphere and an unwanted remnant of toxic waste in soil and water. Missing from their domain will be countless species, much as the troves of aboriginal knowledge would’ve disappeared as tribals lose their lands or abandon their traditional ways.
Sadly, though the problems are real and portentous, the response of the international community has been all smoke and mirrors. The reality is that the loss of species is accelerating and ecosystems are getting fragmented.
One issue surfacing today is “water terrorism”, clearly manifested during Somalia’s civil war and the Bosnian war. The Serbs who besieged Sarajevo quickly discovered a tactic more devastating than direct assault: shut off the electricity and water supply, and the enemy is easy prey. The Bosnian and Somali episodes are just the previews of “water wars” that one day will engulf us in getting access to aqua pura.
Recall June 1969 when the Cuyahoga River near Cleveland, Ohio, caught fire. The bizarre picture of a river burning (Time magazine called it the river that “oozes rather than flows” where a person “does not drown but decays”) brought home to the American people that something was seriously wrong.
Population continues to explode. For aeons Malthusians are sounding out a bleak future. The disaster though averted, the apocalypse hasn’t been staved off. This is disturbing since the technology advantage of the past decades is tapering off with the likes of Bt crops nowhere near acceptance.
The urban problems get worse by the day. Several megacities are already past their limits to accommodate the influx of rampaging humanity telling on urban tolerance threshold. Fresh air gets scarce as auto exhaust suffocates, while new cars continue to suffuse roads not meant to hold so many vehicles.
There are telltale signs that the planet’s protective blanket is getting too clogged for comfort; few years ago there was flood in the Rajasthan deserts. One prediction is partial melting of the polar ice-caps and consequential rise in sea-level that could submerge parts of coastal cities around the world.
Forests continue to get depleted what critics of the unrestrained free enterprise call Wild Capitalism in developing countries and formerly Communist nations. And nowhere is the entrepreneurial spirit more savage than in Russia which accounts for 23 per cent of the world’s woodlands. When Moscow and regional satraps desperate for hard currency opened up the forest to foreign exploitation in the 1990s, there was a mad scramble on the invite. The result has been despoliation of forest on a breathtaking scale. Same in the Amazon, west and central Africa, Indonesia, Alaska and western Canada – where logging and deforestation continued as though there were no tomorrow.
Charles Darwin once waxed eloquent about the “primeval forests undefaced by the hand of man”. Today people treat forest in the most cavalier fashion, as a capital to be liquidated, forgetting that they provide the protective umbrella for life. Forests are home to most of the world’s indigenous people; they act as “carbon sinks” and keep global warming at bay. Forest loss contributes roughly 12-15% to annual greenhouse gas emissions – about the same as the entire global transportation sector. Ditto reckless and unbridled mining, which today has given rise to social problems as the Maoist insurgency, apart from savaging the Good Earth.
Today the pulse of environmental awareness has begun to surge around but its progress is halting, its focus ponderous. Environment is fairly new to the pantheon of policy issues; policy makers are unclear how ecology relates to issue of trade and economic development.
The wounds suffered by the planet have already forced various disciplines to rethink basic assumptions. Economists are wrestling with the absurdity of a mechanism of national accounts that views liquidation of forests as a positive contribution to GDP – adding new concepts like New Economic Welfare, Green Savings, Green GDP, Beyond GDP, and Gross State Product to the lexicon.
Given the growth impulse, governments have focused on GDP growth rate obsessing on natural capital to increase their wealth. Now the question is: will value changes in stocks of natural capital and the ecosystem services help advance a science of new metrics capable of inclusive sustainable policy choices? And will they satisfy emerging economies in these times of senseless consumerism to heed the warning and pursue global futuristic altruism?
The vital question stays undimmed: Will the fertile ingenuity of our consumer society revive exhausted Mother Earth? Can the cerebral stimulations of the apologists of Mammon that spurred a culture of materialism as a final piece of alchemy, turn its head and become the evangelist to halt environmental degradation and stop us from looming ecocide?
We need to learn from history. As George Santayana once said, those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it. We know nuclear weapons can snuff out life on earth. Today humanity could accomplish this horrific feat through its mad lust for accelerated economic growth. But as Edward Abbey observed: “Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.” Endless, thoughtless material expansion will eat into the earth’s biosphere just as malignancy metastasizes and lays waste to the human body.
Now’s the time we realized to focus on the quality of growth – not the amount of material gain. Wanton material gain has become passé. The new era calls for what environmental writer Alan Durning says “culture of permanence” – meeting the needs of the current generation without jeopardizing the prospects of the future ones. Our forebears instinctively saw the dependence on the natural world and the natural order of things; they revered the equation and viewed trees and animals as sacred and treated them with respect. It’s time we returned to that reverence.
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Jagannath Cult and Rath Yatra: Mystique in Peoples' Collective Unconscious
Few festivals in India are celebrated with such boisterous frenzy as the Car Festival of Puri. The Oriyas call it the Rath Yatra and consider it their most auspicious. This chariot ride of Lord Jagannath, Lord Balabhadra and Lady Subhadra down the main thoroughfare of Puri attracts devotees who throng the Bada Danda with the zeal of one possessed. This fare is not confined to the Hindus; the curious, the heathen, the agnostic, the Buddhist, the Jain, all commingle in bonhomie, bemused at the sway Lord Jagannath holds over people’s collective unconscious.
The history of Jagannath goes back to the hoary past when it was worshipped as a Brahmanical deity. Later it passed to the Savaras, and then to the Bhaumas from Assam, who carved three wooden images and installed them in a temple called Nilachala, after their own Kamaksya.
The present temple of Jagannath was built by Chodagangadeva of the Ganga dynasty in the first half of the 12th century A.D. The holiness of the shrine was enhanced by the Muslim invasion of India, when Orissa remained an independent Hindu kingdom up to 1568 A.D. The devout, harassed in other holy Hindu shrines, worshipped at Puri.
It was around this time that the cult of Jagannath assumed a composite character. The three sects of Hinduism – Saivism, Vaishnavism, and Shaktism – welded with earlier cults like the tribal and the Buddhist and Jain strains. This syncretism manifested itself in the art, sculpture, literature of the age evident in the worship of Saura shrine at Konark’s Sun Temple, and the Lingaraj – a mix of Vishnu and Shiva – at the temple in Bhubaneswar. It was catalyzed by visits of great saints to Puri: Sankara, Ramanand, Ramanuja, Madhava Tirtha, Narahari Tirtha, Kabir, Nanak, Chaitanya – each contributing to Jagannath’s catholicity.
Today Rath Yatra is celebrated on the second day of the bright fortnight of Ashadha. The chariots are like moveable temples where the deities sit and symbolically survey the universe and the people, as devotees pull at the ropes to surge the chariots ahead on its way to Gundicha Ghar, the Garden House. Jagannath’s chariot is called Nandighosh, Balabhadra’s Taladwaja, and Subhadra’s chariot – Devadalan.
Once the deities are offered the bhoga and brought to their respective chariots, it is time for cherapahanra. The Raja of Puri sweeps the platforms of the chariots with a gold-handled broom. Legend has it that King Purusottama was keen to marry the princess of Kanchi. But he was thwarted when the king of Kanchi was aghast to see Purusottama perform the ritual ‘cherapahanra’, refusing to give his daughter in marriage. An irate Purusottama vowed revenge swearing to seize the princess and marry her to a sweeper. But to no avail. Beaten back, he craved for Jagannath’s indulgence. Jagannath and Balabhadra cantered ahead of Purusottama in black and white chargers and beat back the king of Kanchi. Purusottama captured the princess and instructed his minister to find a sweeper as her bridegroom. The minister accompanied by the princess of Kanchi happened upon the king while the latter was performing cherapahanra, and urged the princess to garland the king. Purusottama though perplexed, meekly acquiesced.
Now the moment everyone anxiously waits for, arrives. The ropes are fastened and the rath dahuka (car caller) lets out obscenities to the devotees below to show their strength and tug at the chariots. Balabhadra’s chariot is pulled first followed by Subhadra’s, Jagannath’s coming last. As the chariots hurtle down the Bada Danda, the roar of its creaking wheels merges with the devotees’ loud frenzy. The crash of coconuts, mangoes, bananas flung at the deities and an assortment of money, jewellery, and valuables thrown by devotees bespeaks the blind devotion to the Lord and adds to the overall din.
Jagannath’s chariot, unlike the other two, stops at the mausi ma temple (the temple of mother’s sister) before proceeding to the Gundicha Temple. This temple – dedicated to King Indradyumna’s consort is built on the site where the king performed the ashwamedha sacrifice urging the Lord to reveal himself. The story goes that the log was found, but the king’s expert craftsmen failed to carve out the images – their tools breaking down at the touch of the log. The king despaired.
Ananta Maharana, an old carpenter volunteered on condition that he be holed up with the log for 21 days. But the Queen doubting Ananta’s expertise got the gates of the temple opened before the assigned day. The images lay in varying stages of progress – without hands and legs, and incomplete. The carpenter had vanished, and in this bizarre, half-complete state the triad came to be worshipped. It is believed that the carpenter was the divine craftsman Vishnu.
The mystique of Jagannath and the Rath Yatra seems to have rubbed off on the British as well. Baffled by the cult and the teeming multitude furiously pulling at the ropes to haul their Deity, they wrote of human sacrifice at the giant wheels, and adding the term “juggernaut” to the English lexicon. Later the cobweb of doubts was removed; they realized the devotees crushed under the wheels were the ones who accidentally slipped in the melee and inevitably run over.
Once, every twelve years, the wooden logs of the Deities are changed in an event called Naba Kalebara. A party of 20-odd temple servants sets off to Kakatpur, sixty kilometres away. They offer the ‘mahaprasad’ and worship Goddess Mangala in her temple. One of the brahmins is soon intimated by Mangala in a dream the location of the tree that provides the log for the Deities. Whereupon the party proceeds to trace the tree with distinctive signs of sankha (conch), chakra (disc), gada (mace), and padma (lotus) and located near an anthill/river/pond/cremation-ground and a Shiva temple.
The mystique stays undimmed – in the Lord’s righteousness that doesn’t admit of any social hierarchy and His timelessness where the conceptualization of time remains outside the ken of Hindu worldview.
The history of Jagannath goes back to the hoary past when it was worshipped as a Brahmanical deity. Later it passed to the Savaras, and then to the Bhaumas from Assam, who carved three wooden images and installed them in a temple called Nilachala, after their own Kamaksya.
The present temple of Jagannath was built by Chodagangadeva of the Ganga dynasty in the first half of the 12th century A.D. The holiness of the shrine was enhanced by the Muslim invasion of India, when Orissa remained an independent Hindu kingdom up to 1568 A.D. The devout, harassed in other holy Hindu shrines, worshipped at Puri.
It was around this time that the cult of Jagannath assumed a composite character. The three sects of Hinduism – Saivism, Vaishnavism, and Shaktism – welded with earlier cults like the tribal and the Buddhist and Jain strains. This syncretism manifested itself in the art, sculpture, literature of the age evident in the worship of Saura shrine at Konark’s Sun Temple, and the Lingaraj – a mix of Vishnu and Shiva – at the temple in Bhubaneswar. It was catalyzed by visits of great saints to Puri: Sankara, Ramanand, Ramanuja, Madhava Tirtha, Narahari Tirtha, Kabir, Nanak, Chaitanya – each contributing to Jagannath’s catholicity.
Today Rath Yatra is celebrated on the second day of the bright fortnight of Ashadha. The chariots are like moveable temples where the deities sit and symbolically survey the universe and the people, as devotees pull at the ropes to surge the chariots ahead on its way to Gundicha Ghar, the Garden House. Jagannath’s chariot is called Nandighosh, Balabhadra’s Taladwaja, and Subhadra’s chariot – Devadalan.
Once the deities are offered the bhoga and brought to their respective chariots, it is time for cherapahanra. The Raja of Puri sweeps the platforms of the chariots with a gold-handled broom. Legend has it that King Purusottama was keen to marry the princess of Kanchi. But he was thwarted when the king of Kanchi was aghast to see Purusottama perform the ritual ‘cherapahanra’, refusing to give his daughter in marriage. An irate Purusottama vowed revenge swearing to seize the princess and marry her to a sweeper. But to no avail. Beaten back, he craved for Jagannath’s indulgence. Jagannath and Balabhadra cantered ahead of Purusottama in black and white chargers and beat back the king of Kanchi. Purusottama captured the princess and instructed his minister to find a sweeper as her bridegroom. The minister accompanied by the princess of Kanchi happened upon the king while the latter was performing cherapahanra, and urged the princess to garland the king. Purusottama though perplexed, meekly acquiesced.
Now the moment everyone anxiously waits for, arrives. The ropes are fastened and the rath dahuka (car caller) lets out obscenities to the devotees below to show their strength and tug at the chariots. Balabhadra’s chariot is pulled first followed by Subhadra’s, Jagannath’s coming last. As the chariots hurtle down the Bada Danda, the roar of its creaking wheels merges with the devotees’ loud frenzy. The crash of coconuts, mangoes, bananas flung at the deities and an assortment of money, jewellery, and valuables thrown by devotees bespeaks the blind devotion to the Lord and adds to the overall din.
Jagannath’s chariot, unlike the other two, stops at the mausi ma temple (the temple of mother’s sister) before proceeding to the Gundicha Temple. This temple – dedicated to King Indradyumna’s consort is built on the site where the king performed the ashwamedha sacrifice urging the Lord to reveal himself. The story goes that the log was found, but the king’s expert craftsmen failed to carve out the images – their tools breaking down at the touch of the log. The king despaired.
Ananta Maharana, an old carpenter volunteered on condition that he be holed up with the log for 21 days. But the Queen doubting Ananta’s expertise got the gates of the temple opened before the assigned day. The images lay in varying stages of progress – without hands and legs, and incomplete. The carpenter had vanished, and in this bizarre, half-complete state the triad came to be worshipped. It is believed that the carpenter was the divine craftsman Vishnu.
The mystique of Jagannath and the Rath Yatra seems to have rubbed off on the British as well. Baffled by the cult and the teeming multitude furiously pulling at the ropes to haul their Deity, they wrote of human sacrifice at the giant wheels, and adding the term “juggernaut” to the English lexicon. Later the cobweb of doubts was removed; they realized the devotees crushed under the wheels were the ones who accidentally slipped in the melee and inevitably run over.
Once, every twelve years, the wooden logs of the Deities are changed in an event called Naba Kalebara. A party of 20-odd temple servants sets off to Kakatpur, sixty kilometres away. They offer the ‘mahaprasad’ and worship Goddess Mangala in her temple. One of the brahmins is soon intimated by Mangala in a dream the location of the tree that provides the log for the Deities. Whereupon the party proceeds to trace the tree with distinctive signs of sankha (conch), chakra (disc), gada (mace), and padma (lotus) and located near an anthill/river/pond/cremation-ground and a Shiva temple.
The mystique stays undimmed – in the Lord’s righteousness that doesn’t admit of any social hierarchy and His timelessness where the conceptualization of time remains outside the ken of Hindu worldview.
Thursday, July 1, 2010
On the Passing Away of Retirement!
It is with great remorse (else, what’s a death without it!) one writes this obit (how paradoxical!) on retirement, who gladly (sic) was put to sleep early last evening, albeit with much fanfare, song and dance, hype and hoopla. Strange as it may sound, unlike other demises this was indeed a strange death when the mourners (that’s what they are on such occasions) rejoiced, danced, and turned revelers and regaled other mourners present in the real and in the virtual world.
Unlike other deaths, natural or unnatural, this death was not pronounced (naturally) by any doctor, competent or incompetent, but by the high priest of Indian bureaucracy that answers to the name of Department of Personnel and Training (DOPT) and lords over the fate of Indian civil servants. DOPT (poor dear) had been inundated with requests the past few decades to raise the retirement age of its stakeholders, or, failing that to provide post-retirement sinecures to all the retirees, particularly the ones in the higher rarefied echelon, on the ample logic that the power, pelf, and perks granted them while in service must continue seamlessly – at least till their respective corporal deaths in this life and they are granted an appropriate state funeral with varying numbers of gun-salute as per their official pecking order.
To be fair to DOPT, they have, in the past, increased the retirement age from 58 to 60, and have always kept up their unrelenting machinations to further raise the retirement age to whatever comes about through the Central Sixth Pay Commission or through the PMO or the Cabinet Secretariat. Their expectation that the increase could be done inchmeal, almost surreptitiously and unobtrusively, from 60 to 62 to 65 to 67/70 to 75 to 80 to 85 to 90 (for those survivors in the long-distance sojourn), by convincing the political masters particularly the PMO, which itself so gloriously examples ageless service, has been belied. They haven’t met with any degree of success the last 12 years after the first goal scored in 1998, which is such a huge pity.
DOPT’s action has been hailed as ingenious and sui generis prompting some smart-alecs to go bananas over it and claiming that the august department has solved all problems for all times for all civil servants with one fell swoop of an order. Never in the solar plexus has any single body or a group of bodies acting individually, jointly and severally has had acted with such great prescience to alleviate such recurring and nagging problems that have bedevilled humankind since the dawn of civilization when Adam and Eve did the unmentionable and brought curse upon the homo sapiens.
A reading of the operative part of DOPT’s order would make their contention clear. To wit: “After careful examination, and only after taking into consideration the various mutations of representations received from various quarters of government employees and their myriad associations that run into bazillion pages, the Department after due diligence, rumination, mulling and titration (not to confuse with titillation) has decided to abolish retirement for all classes of government employees for all times to come. This is considered very democratic and equitable as it puts the civil servants at par with other public servants, namely politicians for one, who, by dint of the nature of their work and their sense of total commitment and complete involvement to uplift the suffering humanity and the wretched of the earth, have always found it hard to keep off selfless and ageless public service right till their very end.
“A cost-benefit study of this problem was carried out and it was reported by the Committee of Cost-Benefit Analysis – headed by Shri Bharat Singh Ujala, former Secretary, DOPT and 999 other members – appointed to examine the issue that it will be prudent to make service retirement-less, in line, as our venerable constitution enjoins, with a casteless society that Mahatma Gandhi, the Father of our Great Nation, fought and died for. The Committee appointed six years ago has come to this irrefutable conclusion after visiting 168 countries – big and small, developed and developing, emerging and hidden, racially-profiled black and white, brown and yellow, complexion- and pulchritude-profiled blondes and brunettes and auburns – spread across all the continents (except Antarctica) consuming 786 days of overseas stay and entailing enormous hardship to each one of them.
“This is also deemed to be economical in times of world-wide recession in a globalized economy, and it was felt that as one of the acclaimed leaders of emerging economies, India ought to think out-of-the-box – and this is precisely what is aimed to be achieved. There will be enormous savings in the terminal benefits and pension, not to say that the order is also hugely eco-friendly since no more papers in writing countless representations will be used.
“It has been estimated by the Sub-Committee on Ecological Aspect appointed as a part of the Committee of Cost-Benefit Analysis under the chairmanship of Shri U.C. Mashkaram, retired Secretary, Ministry of Environment and Forest (and with a representative sample of 367 members drawn from various walks of public and private service) to Sub-examine and Sub-recommend that 12569741983240007 tons of paper will be saved that translates to saving of (roughly) 23965287394 trees and improving forest cover of our country by 0.2135%. In effect, all employees will continue to be potent workers contributing their mite to the building of a strong India till the time they decide to bid farewell to this world.
“It has further been decided to do one better than the only super-power in the world today – the USA – where judges of their Supreme Court are sadly and disingenuously retired on grounds of dementia, when – and only when – the need to lean on the state is acute and which cannot be overstated, by abolishing this reprehensible and hideous provision in our perennial welfare state. Yes, we can – in our country. And yes, we have!
“As would naturally follow from the foregoing, voluntary retirements (VR) too have been abolished. If for any strange, bizarre, inexplicable, and personal reason, any civil servant wishes to opt for the erstwhile VR, he will henceforth only have to intimate his desire to abstain from work. He will nonetheless continue to draw his full salary and all perks available to him at the time of such casualty (no proposal for refusal or diminution of salary/perks shall be entertained) though he will stand to lose his purchasing wherewithal in the form of power, pelf and clout. That act will solely be of his/her own choice and making and the State cannot, repeat cannot, be held responsible for the hardship that such an act will entail.
“Similar fate will also attend upon those officials compulsorily sent home on grounds of indiscipline as part of provisions of Rule 11 for major penalty enshrined in the CCS (CCA) Rules, 1965. It is again reiterated that given our steadfast and relentless resolve to attain global noble welfare statehood for its civil servants, such officials will not be deemed to have retired from service. To soften the brutality of such acts on their part, it has been decided that they will continue to enjoy all travel perks they were used to all life, e.g. official visits to attend friend’s/relative’s weddings and divorces, births and funerals, mundaans and thread ceremonies etc. Also they will continue to earn annual increments and promotions till such time they reach the pinnacle of the pay granted to the highest paid civil servant. Needless to say they shall continue to enjoy Leave Travel Concessions as before granted while in active service.”
What though was left unsaid (it resonates though) and if carried out could lead to enormous savings was the fact that there would be no need to create countless post-retirement sinecures imaginatively hammered out from time to time to accommodate the strident demand of the ever-growing smart retirees who with progress of medical research in the form of genome mapping, embryonic stem cell, and over-the-counter-available statin and Erecgra-SR are on their rapid march to immortality and threatening to defy death, space and the noble Creator.
Plus, austerity being the battle-cry of DOPT, supernumerary posts created the past few decades in the form of Chairmanship and membership of old and newly-formed commissions (including Commissions of Inquiry and posts of Interlocutors that go on interminably) and sub-commissions, post of advisors to various Ministries/Ministers and advisors to Advisors, Chairman and membership of various extra-terrestrial Municipal, State and Central Bodies, would have to be given a decent and dignified burial simply because there will be no necessity (even takers) after the august personages, now occupying the posts, accidentally decide to kick the bucket.
The order is also said to usher in greater openness in public service when transparency is the buzzword by removing once and for all the oft-repeated complaint of civil servants’ pliability and accusation of nepotism toward select corporate houses during their last few years of service as quid pro quo – entailing huge loss of government dues/receipts for eternity – when they furiously and hungrily, even insanely, looked around for post-retirement employ. It is also rumored that the Ministry of Home Affairs already battle-scarred with terrorist and Maoist problems have informally granted their concurrence for retirement-free public service so that the pressure on them to appoint retired asinine and headless civil servants (with powerful brothers-sisters-fathers-mothers-in-law connect) as Governors is alleviated, and politicians, ailing from terminal illness or pastured after losing in the hustings, could climb onto the gubernatorial gaddis.
DOPT in its sagacity has also empirically established through simulation packages employed by another Sub-Committee consisting of 589 members on Body-Mind Asynchronized Continuum – headed by Shri M.S. Dhanushkodi, former Secretary of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India and members drawn from all conceivable and unconceivable ministries and departments of Government of India and other clever participating State and UT governments – appointed to examine the aspect of savings in the form of better work-life balance that retirement-free service would necessarily entail.
It was thought (and quite rightly) that the retirement of retirement clause would grant sound, even good, sleep, and thereby, sound health to the civil servants since the Damocles sword hanging about them like an albatross in their mind (even body) would be removed, and the same has no scope to revisit the honorable civil servants even in their dreams and/or subconscious, unconscious and/or comatose stages. It indeed would grant good health to all and sundry. And that sure will show up in the reduced medical claims preferred by (the present-day) about-to-retire personnel burdened with the onerous responsibility of running the nation’s administration as well as the retirees. It would also unobtrusively help to right-size or re-size or down-size the moribund Central Government Health Scheme, with its rampant corruption and tendency to supply sub-standard/under-potented drugs to patients, before making a pitch in the not-too-distant future to abolish the same organization summarily.
There is a flip side to this historic order though. With service now made co-terminus with life, given the addictive aroma of selfless public service, there is bound to be much jostling and reluctance to bid adieu to this – the splendid world. Who, in his mind, will like to travel into an unknown, uncharted world where uncertainties bristle and are bound to confront him, and with no guarantee of such continued sinecure as gratuitously granted here in India on Mother Earth?
“The 235-member Sub-Committee on Likely Extended Life-Span (SCLELS), headed by Shri Z.A. Shaman, former Secretary, Ministry of Social Welfare, carried out an in-depth analysis of the problem and went into the issue at great length in their 333 sittings spread across 129 countries. They have come to the unlikely conclusion that given human nature, ennui and boredom is bound to set in, and this coupled with the pugnacious putrescence unleashed by fellow civil servants in their day-to-day discourse will negate the doomsday that neo-Malthusians are apt to stir up. In other words, most of them (if not all) will one day (though light years away) decide to call it a life! Thereby the equilibrium will be made (or at least seen) to be restored on Father India.
“Not to forget that deaths caused by natural calamities (earthquake, volcano, flood, avalanche, sun-stroke et al) and unnatural calamities (air-crashes – particularly of the venerable national carrier; gas leakages – like the Bhopal kind; train accidents; Maoist and terrorist attacks particularly in the 5-Star Hotels) will be the periodic, why almost daily, icing on the cake and, at this point in time, considered safely sufficient to take care of the likely and impending problem of growing unemployment.”
For all the catholicity of this salutary order, to be frank, this doubtless is fraught with certain difficulties, though not (mercifully) insurmountable. Of course pension will be a thing of the past, yet family pension will have to be paid along with leave encashment and death-cum-retirement gratuity to the widow(er) as the case would be. And no civil servant, given his years of selfless public service would be inclined to leave his/her spouse poorer by availing a day’s earned leave to pass away from this sacred world and thereby reducing one day from the total of 5000 days of encashable earned leave. Leave s/he must avail to die in the arms of his/her respective loving spouse (transfer and/or stealing of affection of others’ spouses not encouraged!). In effect, for all deaths either casual leave (CL) or restricted holiday (RH) will be availed. Given their transparent honesty, spotless integrity, and blotless probity, the purpose of leave will clearly state something like this: To die peaceably in home comfort in the arms of my dear spouse without affecting the quantum/amount of leave encashment. That would indeed be very chic and so darlingesque!
As would be apparent by now, there were no pall-bearers or hearse for poor, dear, bereft Retirement – always the abominable outcast in life, and so too in death – as evidenced yesterday. Only the cacophony and joie de vivre was loud and thunderous, the raptures of glee and bonhomie of revelers reverberating across the official corridors and drifting adroitly over time and Indian spaces, celebrating the final, irrevocable transfer of retirement compulsion to the hoary pension establishment – to naught and moss there for perpetuity!
Unlike other deaths, natural or unnatural, this death was not pronounced (naturally) by any doctor, competent or incompetent, but by the high priest of Indian bureaucracy that answers to the name of Department of Personnel and Training (DOPT) and lords over the fate of Indian civil servants. DOPT (poor dear) had been inundated with requests the past few decades to raise the retirement age of its stakeholders, or, failing that to provide post-retirement sinecures to all the retirees, particularly the ones in the higher rarefied echelon, on the ample logic that the power, pelf, and perks granted them while in service must continue seamlessly – at least till their respective corporal deaths in this life and they are granted an appropriate state funeral with varying numbers of gun-salute as per their official pecking order.
To be fair to DOPT, they have, in the past, increased the retirement age from 58 to 60, and have always kept up their unrelenting machinations to further raise the retirement age to whatever comes about through the Central Sixth Pay Commission or through the PMO or the Cabinet Secretariat. Their expectation that the increase could be done inchmeal, almost surreptitiously and unobtrusively, from 60 to 62 to 65 to 67/70 to 75 to 80 to 85 to 90 (for those survivors in the long-distance sojourn), by convincing the political masters particularly the PMO, which itself so gloriously examples ageless service, has been belied. They haven’t met with any degree of success the last 12 years after the first goal scored in 1998, which is such a huge pity.
DOPT’s action has been hailed as ingenious and sui generis prompting some smart-alecs to go bananas over it and claiming that the august department has solved all problems for all times for all civil servants with one fell swoop of an order. Never in the solar plexus has any single body or a group of bodies acting individually, jointly and severally has had acted with such great prescience to alleviate such recurring and nagging problems that have bedevilled humankind since the dawn of civilization when Adam and Eve did the unmentionable and brought curse upon the homo sapiens.
A reading of the operative part of DOPT’s order would make their contention clear. To wit: “After careful examination, and only after taking into consideration the various mutations of representations received from various quarters of government employees and their myriad associations that run into bazillion pages, the Department after due diligence, rumination, mulling and titration (not to confuse with titillation) has decided to abolish retirement for all classes of government employees for all times to come. This is considered very democratic and equitable as it puts the civil servants at par with other public servants, namely politicians for one, who, by dint of the nature of their work and their sense of total commitment and complete involvement to uplift the suffering humanity and the wretched of the earth, have always found it hard to keep off selfless and ageless public service right till their very end.
“A cost-benefit study of this problem was carried out and it was reported by the Committee of Cost-Benefit Analysis – headed by Shri Bharat Singh Ujala, former Secretary, DOPT and 999 other members – appointed to examine the issue that it will be prudent to make service retirement-less, in line, as our venerable constitution enjoins, with a casteless society that Mahatma Gandhi, the Father of our Great Nation, fought and died for. The Committee appointed six years ago has come to this irrefutable conclusion after visiting 168 countries – big and small, developed and developing, emerging and hidden, racially-profiled black and white, brown and yellow, complexion- and pulchritude-profiled blondes and brunettes and auburns – spread across all the continents (except Antarctica) consuming 786 days of overseas stay and entailing enormous hardship to each one of them.
“This is also deemed to be economical in times of world-wide recession in a globalized economy, and it was felt that as one of the acclaimed leaders of emerging economies, India ought to think out-of-the-box – and this is precisely what is aimed to be achieved. There will be enormous savings in the terminal benefits and pension, not to say that the order is also hugely eco-friendly since no more papers in writing countless representations will be used.
“It has been estimated by the Sub-Committee on Ecological Aspect appointed as a part of the Committee of Cost-Benefit Analysis under the chairmanship of Shri U.C. Mashkaram, retired Secretary, Ministry of Environment and Forest (and with a representative sample of 367 members drawn from various walks of public and private service) to Sub-examine and Sub-recommend that 12569741983240007 tons of paper will be saved that translates to saving of (roughly) 23965287394 trees and improving forest cover of our country by 0.2135%. In effect, all employees will continue to be potent workers contributing their mite to the building of a strong India till the time they decide to bid farewell to this world.
“It has further been decided to do one better than the only super-power in the world today – the USA – where judges of their Supreme Court are sadly and disingenuously retired on grounds of dementia, when – and only when – the need to lean on the state is acute and which cannot be overstated, by abolishing this reprehensible and hideous provision in our perennial welfare state. Yes, we can – in our country. And yes, we have!
“As would naturally follow from the foregoing, voluntary retirements (VR) too have been abolished. If for any strange, bizarre, inexplicable, and personal reason, any civil servant wishes to opt for the erstwhile VR, he will henceforth only have to intimate his desire to abstain from work. He will nonetheless continue to draw his full salary and all perks available to him at the time of such casualty (no proposal for refusal or diminution of salary/perks shall be entertained) though he will stand to lose his purchasing wherewithal in the form of power, pelf and clout. That act will solely be of his/her own choice and making and the State cannot, repeat cannot, be held responsible for the hardship that such an act will entail.
“Similar fate will also attend upon those officials compulsorily sent home on grounds of indiscipline as part of provisions of Rule 11 for major penalty enshrined in the CCS (CCA) Rules, 1965. It is again reiterated that given our steadfast and relentless resolve to attain global noble welfare statehood for its civil servants, such officials will not be deemed to have retired from service. To soften the brutality of such acts on their part, it has been decided that they will continue to enjoy all travel perks they were used to all life, e.g. official visits to attend friend’s/relative’s weddings and divorces, births and funerals, mundaans and thread ceremonies etc. Also they will continue to earn annual increments and promotions till such time they reach the pinnacle of the pay granted to the highest paid civil servant. Needless to say they shall continue to enjoy Leave Travel Concessions as before granted while in active service.”
What though was left unsaid (it resonates though) and if carried out could lead to enormous savings was the fact that there would be no need to create countless post-retirement sinecures imaginatively hammered out from time to time to accommodate the strident demand of the ever-growing smart retirees who with progress of medical research in the form of genome mapping, embryonic stem cell, and over-the-counter-available statin and Erecgra-SR are on their rapid march to immortality and threatening to defy death, space and the noble Creator.
Plus, austerity being the battle-cry of DOPT, supernumerary posts created the past few decades in the form of Chairmanship and membership of old and newly-formed commissions (including Commissions of Inquiry and posts of Interlocutors that go on interminably) and sub-commissions, post of advisors to various Ministries/Ministers and advisors to Advisors, Chairman and membership of various extra-terrestrial Municipal, State and Central Bodies, would have to be given a decent and dignified burial simply because there will be no necessity (even takers) after the august personages, now occupying the posts, accidentally decide to kick the bucket.
The order is also said to usher in greater openness in public service when transparency is the buzzword by removing once and for all the oft-repeated complaint of civil servants’ pliability and accusation of nepotism toward select corporate houses during their last few years of service as quid pro quo – entailing huge loss of government dues/receipts for eternity – when they furiously and hungrily, even insanely, looked around for post-retirement employ. It is also rumored that the Ministry of Home Affairs already battle-scarred with terrorist and Maoist problems have informally granted their concurrence for retirement-free public service so that the pressure on them to appoint retired asinine and headless civil servants (with powerful brothers-sisters-fathers-mothers-in-law connect) as Governors is alleviated, and politicians, ailing from terminal illness or pastured after losing in the hustings, could climb onto the gubernatorial gaddis.
DOPT in its sagacity has also empirically established through simulation packages employed by another Sub-Committee consisting of 589 members on Body-Mind Asynchronized Continuum – headed by Shri M.S. Dhanushkodi, former Secretary of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India and members drawn from all conceivable and unconceivable ministries and departments of Government of India and other clever participating State and UT governments – appointed to examine the aspect of savings in the form of better work-life balance that retirement-free service would necessarily entail.
It was thought (and quite rightly) that the retirement of retirement clause would grant sound, even good, sleep, and thereby, sound health to the civil servants since the Damocles sword hanging about them like an albatross in their mind (even body) would be removed, and the same has no scope to revisit the honorable civil servants even in their dreams and/or subconscious, unconscious and/or comatose stages. It indeed would grant good health to all and sundry. And that sure will show up in the reduced medical claims preferred by (the present-day) about-to-retire personnel burdened with the onerous responsibility of running the nation’s administration as well as the retirees. It would also unobtrusively help to right-size or re-size or down-size the moribund Central Government Health Scheme, with its rampant corruption and tendency to supply sub-standard/under-potented drugs to patients, before making a pitch in the not-too-distant future to abolish the same organization summarily.
There is a flip side to this historic order though. With service now made co-terminus with life, given the addictive aroma of selfless public service, there is bound to be much jostling and reluctance to bid adieu to this – the splendid world. Who, in his mind, will like to travel into an unknown, uncharted world where uncertainties bristle and are bound to confront him, and with no guarantee of such continued sinecure as gratuitously granted here in India on Mother Earth?
“The 235-member Sub-Committee on Likely Extended Life-Span (SCLELS), headed by Shri Z.A. Shaman, former Secretary, Ministry of Social Welfare, carried out an in-depth analysis of the problem and went into the issue at great length in their 333 sittings spread across 129 countries. They have come to the unlikely conclusion that given human nature, ennui and boredom is bound to set in, and this coupled with the pugnacious putrescence unleashed by fellow civil servants in their day-to-day discourse will negate the doomsday that neo-Malthusians are apt to stir up. In other words, most of them (if not all) will one day (though light years away) decide to call it a life! Thereby the equilibrium will be made (or at least seen) to be restored on Father India.
“Not to forget that deaths caused by natural calamities (earthquake, volcano, flood, avalanche, sun-stroke et al) and unnatural calamities (air-crashes – particularly of the venerable national carrier; gas leakages – like the Bhopal kind; train accidents; Maoist and terrorist attacks particularly in the 5-Star Hotels) will be the periodic, why almost daily, icing on the cake and, at this point in time, considered safely sufficient to take care of the likely and impending problem of growing unemployment.”
For all the catholicity of this salutary order, to be frank, this doubtless is fraught with certain difficulties, though not (mercifully) insurmountable. Of course pension will be a thing of the past, yet family pension will have to be paid along with leave encashment and death-cum-retirement gratuity to the widow(er) as the case would be. And no civil servant, given his years of selfless public service would be inclined to leave his/her spouse poorer by availing a day’s earned leave to pass away from this sacred world and thereby reducing one day from the total of 5000 days of encashable earned leave. Leave s/he must avail to die in the arms of his/her respective loving spouse (transfer and/or stealing of affection of others’ spouses not encouraged!). In effect, for all deaths either casual leave (CL) or restricted holiday (RH) will be availed. Given their transparent honesty, spotless integrity, and blotless probity, the purpose of leave will clearly state something like this: To die peaceably in home comfort in the arms of my dear spouse without affecting the quantum/amount of leave encashment. That would indeed be very chic and so darlingesque!
As would be apparent by now, there were no pall-bearers or hearse for poor, dear, bereft Retirement – always the abominable outcast in life, and so too in death – as evidenced yesterday. Only the cacophony and joie de vivre was loud and thunderous, the raptures of glee and bonhomie of revelers reverberating across the official corridors and drifting adroitly over time and Indian spaces, celebrating the final, irrevocable transfer of retirement compulsion to the hoary pension establishment – to naught and moss there for perpetuity!
Sunday, June 27, 2010
"Leave" Your Office: A Throwback To State Maternalism
It may be rather glib to say, but 2010 Anno Domini is indeed the year of mourning – for all those who live off holidays. At the beginning of the year I overheard few young smart-alecs of the post-liberalized era commiserating with one another about most holidays falling on Saturdays and Sundays – what they called the wasted weekends! “Do you know,” chirruped one, trying to outsmart others in his electric wit, “so bad this year has gotten that even the damned Good Friday falls on a weekend!” It took others some talking to explain the wise owl the impossibility of his wisecrack!
See the goodies a government job offers. Look at the freebies its employees enjoy apropos of holidays and leave. Apart from 104 days of holidays (Saturdays/Sundays), there are 17 public holidays plus 2 restricted holidays plus 30 days earned leave and 8 days casual leave granted annually. These are all fully-paid leaves. There are also 20 days of half-pay leave granted every year open to accumulation. I’m still trying but am yet to know of any more altruistic nation than ours. Never mind if governance goes to seed!
Women are twice blessed. In the wake of the acceptance of Sixth Central Pay Commission recommendations, the Department of Personnel & Training (DOPT), Government of India vide its OM dated 11th September 2008 communicated two important decisions. One was enhancement of the quantum of Maternity Leave from 135 days to 180 days with the added proviso that leave of the kind due and admissible can be granted in continuation with Maternity Leave up to 2 years.
The other was the introduction of Child Care Leave (CCL): “Women employees having minor children may be granted Child Care Leave for a maximum period of two years (i.e. 730 days) during their entire service for taking care of upto two children whether for rearing or to look after any of their needs like examination, sickness etc. During the period of such leave, the women employees shall be paid leave salary equal to the pay drawn immediately before proceeding on leave. It may be availed of in more than one spell. Child Care Leave may also be allowed for the third year as leave not due. It may be combined with leave of the kind due and admissible.”
Soon applications poured in from women employees to avail CCL threatening paralysis of government offices. DOPT realized its folly and tried to make the most of a bad situation through another OM dated 29th September 2008 clarifying that CCL shall be admissible for two eldest surviving children only. That could hardly retrieve the impossible situation it was plunging the offices into. Thus came the DOPT’s third OM dated 18th November, 2008 that clarified that the intention of Child Care Leave for women employees was to facilitate women employees to take care of their children at the time of need. However, this does not mean that CCL should disrupt the functioning of Central Government offices. The nature of this leave was envisaged to be the same as that of earned leave. Accordingly, CCL cannot be demanded as a matter of right, and it can be availed only if the employee concerned has no Earned Leave at her credit.
The three orders read together make CCL sui generis vis-à-vis other leaves. Unlike Study Leave, it is an open-ended leave with no strings attached; there is no obligation to return to work. In effect, it means women employees are free to resign after two years of fully-paid CCL availed with all perks. Look at another largesse: EL earned during CCL!
No other order issued in post-independent India has perhaps been so insanely bountiful and so infuriatingly generous to its employees, and so unabashedly blasé about the organization it serves. With women constituting 30-40% of the total strength in most offices, how on earth are offices to function? How do schools already reeling under shortage of trained teachers teach when teachers – mostly women – decide to avail CCL since their minor children – more than their students – need looking after? How are hospitals to run when doctors/nurses avail CCL? I’m tempted to draw upon a folksy analogy to convey the brutality of the order on the incubator of public service: women parliamentarians availing CCL for their children’s sake!
Any dispassionate observer would say that this is an order that could only happen in an organization that has no concern for its and/or its customers’ good but views the organization as maternalistic with altruistic mammaries that can be milked interminably. Corporates world over grant maternity and childcare leaves but without emoluments – there is no cost-to-company (CTC) that the shareholders can gripe. And the experience lost during years of absence on pregnancy and childcare doesn’t redound back upon for future promotions. Not here though. Because experience and merit matter little in a state that marvels at its own generosity, and who cares about this CTC (Cost-to-Country)the welfare state dishes out anyway so ungrudgingly and the silent, ignorant honest tax-payers uncomplainingly made to bear.
Let’s see the aspect of equity and commonsense. If childcare is the fulcrum, doesn’t the single-parent man – divorced or widower – deserve better not only for sake of equity but genuine need? That no such thought has attended this order I feel a tendril of joy begin to wind its way through me that I can’t be accused of male chauvinism.
We can’t play ducks and drakes with public money. The tax-payer (poor dear – ignorant of such wanton orders stashed in the minutiae of government files!) would be right to call this daylight heist. For you can’t eat the cake and have it too! I’ve no problems with women availing CCL (they need it and they must be facilitated) but such largesse can’t be bestowed with public money. Nor must it become a way to avoid office work – a tool to switch on and switch off as convenience warrants.
If there is still any sense left, the DOPT should revisit the order (as it has in the past)and make CCL without pay – availed after exhausting all leaves: Earned and Half-Pay. A happier phrasing of the order would shine through rather than sweeping up this hollow circle of excess – that would bring about a punctilio of a higher code, which today sadly looks long gone.
See the goodies a government job offers. Look at the freebies its employees enjoy apropos of holidays and leave. Apart from 104 days of holidays (Saturdays/Sundays), there are 17 public holidays plus 2 restricted holidays plus 30 days earned leave and 8 days casual leave granted annually. These are all fully-paid leaves. There are also 20 days of half-pay leave granted every year open to accumulation. I’m still trying but am yet to know of any more altruistic nation than ours. Never mind if governance goes to seed!
Women are twice blessed. In the wake of the acceptance of Sixth Central Pay Commission recommendations, the Department of Personnel & Training (DOPT), Government of India vide its OM dated 11th September 2008 communicated two important decisions. One was enhancement of the quantum of Maternity Leave from 135 days to 180 days with the added proviso that leave of the kind due and admissible can be granted in continuation with Maternity Leave up to 2 years.
The other was the introduction of Child Care Leave (CCL): “Women employees having minor children may be granted Child Care Leave for a maximum period of two years (i.e. 730 days) during their entire service for taking care of upto two children whether for rearing or to look after any of their needs like examination, sickness etc. During the period of such leave, the women employees shall be paid leave salary equal to the pay drawn immediately before proceeding on leave. It may be availed of in more than one spell. Child Care Leave may also be allowed for the third year as leave not due. It may be combined with leave of the kind due and admissible.”
Soon applications poured in from women employees to avail CCL threatening paralysis of government offices. DOPT realized its folly and tried to make the most of a bad situation through another OM dated 29th September 2008 clarifying that CCL shall be admissible for two eldest surviving children only. That could hardly retrieve the impossible situation it was plunging the offices into. Thus came the DOPT’s third OM dated 18th November, 2008 that clarified that the intention of Child Care Leave for women employees was to facilitate women employees to take care of their children at the time of need. However, this does not mean that CCL should disrupt the functioning of Central Government offices. The nature of this leave was envisaged to be the same as that of earned leave. Accordingly, CCL cannot be demanded as a matter of right, and it can be availed only if the employee concerned has no Earned Leave at her credit.
The three orders read together make CCL sui generis vis-à-vis other leaves. Unlike Study Leave, it is an open-ended leave with no strings attached; there is no obligation to return to work. In effect, it means women employees are free to resign after two years of fully-paid CCL availed with all perks. Look at another largesse: EL earned during CCL!
No other order issued in post-independent India has perhaps been so insanely bountiful and so infuriatingly generous to its employees, and so unabashedly blasé about the organization it serves. With women constituting 30-40% of the total strength in most offices, how on earth are offices to function? How do schools already reeling under shortage of trained teachers teach when teachers – mostly women – decide to avail CCL since their minor children – more than their students – need looking after? How are hospitals to run when doctors/nurses avail CCL? I’m tempted to draw upon a folksy analogy to convey the brutality of the order on the incubator of public service: women parliamentarians availing CCL for their children’s sake!
Any dispassionate observer would say that this is an order that could only happen in an organization that has no concern for its and/or its customers’ good but views the organization as maternalistic with altruistic mammaries that can be milked interminably. Corporates world over grant maternity and childcare leaves but without emoluments – there is no cost-to-company (CTC) that the shareholders can gripe. And the experience lost during years of absence on pregnancy and childcare doesn’t redound back upon for future promotions. Not here though. Because experience and merit matter little in a state that marvels at its own generosity, and who cares about this CTC (Cost-to-Country)the welfare state dishes out anyway so ungrudgingly and the silent, ignorant honest tax-payers uncomplainingly made to bear.
Let’s see the aspect of equity and commonsense. If childcare is the fulcrum, doesn’t the single-parent man – divorced or widower – deserve better not only for sake of equity but genuine need? That no such thought has attended this order I feel a tendril of joy begin to wind its way through me that I can’t be accused of male chauvinism.
We can’t play ducks and drakes with public money. The tax-payer (poor dear – ignorant of such wanton orders stashed in the minutiae of government files!) would be right to call this daylight heist. For you can’t eat the cake and have it too! I’ve no problems with women availing CCL (they need it and they must be facilitated) but such largesse can’t be bestowed with public money. Nor must it become a way to avoid office work – a tool to switch on and switch off as convenience warrants.
If there is still any sense left, the DOPT should revisit the order (as it has in the past)and make CCL without pay – availed after exhausting all leaves: Earned and Half-Pay. A happier phrasing of the order would shine through rather than sweeping up this hollow circle of excess – that would bring about a punctilio of a higher code, which today sadly looks long gone.
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Babugiri: The Headless Chicken Syndrome
Remember Ronen of the headless chicken fame? Let me jog your memory: it happened not-too-long ago in 2007 when Ronen Sen, our Ambassador in the USA, compared the acts of Indian politicians who opposed the nuclear deal negotiation to that of a headless chicken. Politicians quickly cudgeled and threatened to knock the head off Ronen’s. Mercifully Ronen escaped the onslaught by the “neck of his head”.
Few know the story of “Mike the Headless Chicken”, so let me relate. On September 10, 1945, Lloyd Olsen of Fruita, Colorado, had his mother-in-law around for supper. Lloyd knew she was fond of chicken and would savour the neck. He positioned his axe precisely, estimating just the right tolerances, to leave a generous neck bone. Even then it was as important for sons-out-laws’ to suck-up to mothers-in-law the world over! With trepidation Olsen failed to completely decapitate the pullet named Mike. The axe missed the jugular vein, leaving one ear and most of the brain stem intact.
The determined bird quickly shook off the traumatic event and telegraphed his intentions to live. Mike got back being a chicken, started pecking for food and preening his feathers. Since a chicken’s reflexes are controlled by the brain stem Mike was able to remain quite healthy.
His crowing, though, was less impressive – just a gurgling sound made in his throat, unable to crow to announce dawn. Being headless did not keep Mike from putting on weight. Olsen said Mike was a robust chicken – a fine specimen of a chicken except for not having a head! His fame and fortune earned him recognition in Life and Time magazines. In March 1947, Miracle Mike valued (even insured) at $10,000 choked to death.
Readers may glean parallels from our everyday life. I’m sorry I’m unable to expatiate more here thanks to the Conduct Rules I’m bound to. So please be imaginative: Do we need a head? More pertinently, do we have one? Well, the honest answer is – either we don’t have one or have too much of it. In effect, it means there are two types of acts: head-less or head-ful.
Lest you readers think I say this tongue-in-cheek let me elaborate this with some Babugiri thrown in for full measure that relates to both types. A few months ago the Ministry of Finance issued an order on Expenditure Management – Economy Measures and Rationalization of Expenditure that set the cat among the doves and pigeons.
You see doves and pigeons are essentially different, though smaller forms are usually called doves, larger forms pigeons. An exception is the white pigeons, who stay at home, are harmless, and are known as the “dove of peace”. Here we’re focusing on the putative pigeons. They are of varied kinds: homing, itinerant, and irreverent.
The order made everyone unhappy. Given the current fiscal situation and the consequent pressure on Government’s resources, the order said, economy and rationalization of expenditure was a necessity; the government mandated 10% cut in expenditure under Domestic/Foreign Travel.
To rub salt into the wound, holding of exhibitions/seminars/ conferences abroad was strongly discouraged and complete ban on holding conferences at 5-star hotels enjoined. To cap it all, the order proscribed air travel by first class. You’ve to rob Peter to pay Paul!
No sooner the cat was out of the bag, the media (pray how mean they can get!) pounced on the pigeons inviting them (ever so politely!) over for tête-à-têtes. I must honestly admit I’m asinine and, because of it, naïve to an elaborate fault. I watch all discussions on television and read six newspapers to get to the heart of the matter. Yet the matter almost always eludes my small mind. Every time I listen to these august pigeons parrot worldly wisdom of austerity like travelling cattle-class or in cargo-holds I blanch and wonder if they would be charged per head or per kilogram for their air tickets. And which will be economical – given their girth, circumference, and shape, thanks to past 7-Star free repasts, the gyms in 5-star hotels and clubs notwithstanding.
Make no mistake. Their girth is not the outcome of my febrile imagination. One of the newspapers carried reportage that travelling economy is a strict no-no for pigeons because they need space for clearing files while airborne, since that involves movement of the hand holding the venerable pen to put their priceless honorable squiggles. Plus they need quietude not provided in the economy section peopled by illiterate chatterati and twitterati. Obviously, they can’t be boxed in the same class as the population they serve.
Further, how could a Mephistophelian order stop pigeons, particularly the itinerant kind, to visit cooler climes in summer months on study tours, workshops/conferences/seminars abroad at Government cost when their heart and groin tell them so? Let’s face it. They’ve come out of the raging bushfire triumphant fighting hard battles – scarred in body and mind and soul – and each one of them needs replenishment and nourishment.
Worse: the complete ban on holding of meetings/conferences at 5-star hotels was the proverbial last straw. You can’t starve a pigeon and pigeonhole it! Which is why, I guess, pigeons of all shades – the homing statists, the itinerant wastrels, the irreverent withering-kind of stateless states – united and spoke as one: the fact that they’re beyond the pale of finmin’s hideous diktats. Of course, pigeons have their own rules of the game – above the lesser avian’s flights of passage. Of higher pedigree, they make their own rules, and would like to self-serve and self-preserve. Abstinence and asceticism are not exactly terms of endearment for them; far from it, they make mincemeat of these terms if someone had the temerity to throw such execrable objects at them.
Ahoy, the bell’s ringing loud in my mind – that famous infernal incident concerning Madame Roland. After all the bloodletting of the French Revolution of 1789 as she was whisked to the guillotine, she exclaimed those unforgettable words: “Liberty, what crimes are committed in Thy name!”
Heavens, did I paraphrase Madame Roland and caw implacably – “Austerity, what shams in Thy name!” – when I heard the orders reneged? We live in a nanny state in a profane world – tokenism notwithstanding – right? I simply join the children in chorus: Mike, Mike, where’s your head? Even without it, you’re not dead! while remembering the moral: Always care for your mother-in-law, you twit son-out-law! What the heck?
Few know the story of “Mike the Headless Chicken”, so let me relate. On September 10, 1945, Lloyd Olsen of Fruita, Colorado, had his mother-in-law around for supper. Lloyd knew she was fond of chicken and would savour the neck. He positioned his axe precisely, estimating just the right tolerances, to leave a generous neck bone. Even then it was as important for sons-out-laws’ to suck-up to mothers-in-law the world over! With trepidation Olsen failed to completely decapitate the pullet named Mike. The axe missed the jugular vein, leaving one ear and most of the brain stem intact.
The determined bird quickly shook off the traumatic event and telegraphed his intentions to live. Mike got back being a chicken, started pecking for food and preening his feathers. Since a chicken’s reflexes are controlled by the brain stem Mike was able to remain quite healthy.
His crowing, though, was less impressive – just a gurgling sound made in his throat, unable to crow to announce dawn. Being headless did not keep Mike from putting on weight. Olsen said Mike was a robust chicken – a fine specimen of a chicken except for not having a head! His fame and fortune earned him recognition in Life and Time magazines. In March 1947, Miracle Mike valued (even insured) at $10,000 choked to death.
Readers may glean parallels from our everyday life. I’m sorry I’m unable to expatiate more here thanks to the Conduct Rules I’m bound to. So please be imaginative: Do we need a head? More pertinently, do we have one? Well, the honest answer is – either we don’t have one or have too much of it. In effect, it means there are two types of acts: head-less or head-ful.
Lest you readers think I say this tongue-in-cheek let me elaborate this with some Babugiri thrown in for full measure that relates to both types. A few months ago the Ministry of Finance issued an order on Expenditure Management – Economy Measures and Rationalization of Expenditure that set the cat among the doves and pigeons.
You see doves and pigeons are essentially different, though smaller forms are usually called doves, larger forms pigeons. An exception is the white pigeons, who stay at home, are harmless, and are known as the “dove of peace”. Here we’re focusing on the putative pigeons. They are of varied kinds: homing, itinerant, and irreverent.
The order made everyone unhappy. Given the current fiscal situation and the consequent pressure on Government’s resources, the order said, economy and rationalization of expenditure was a necessity; the government mandated 10% cut in expenditure under Domestic/Foreign Travel.
To rub salt into the wound, holding of exhibitions/seminars/ conferences abroad was strongly discouraged and complete ban on holding conferences at 5-star hotels enjoined. To cap it all, the order proscribed air travel by first class. You’ve to rob Peter to pay Paul!
No sooner the cat was out of the bag, the media (pray how mean they can get!) pounced on the pigeons inviting them (ever so politely!) over for tête-à-têtes. I must honestly admit I’m asinine and, because of it, naïve to an elaborate fault. I watch all discussions on television and read six newspapers to get to the heart of the matter. Yet the matter almost always eludes my small mind. Every time I listen to these august pigeons parrot worldly wisdom of austerity like travelling cattle-class or in cargo-holds I blanch and wonder if they would be charged per head or per kilogram for their air tickets. And which will be economical – given their girth, circumference, and shape, thanks to past 7-Star free repasts, the gyms in 5-star hotels and clubs notwithstanding.
Make no mistake. Their girth is not the outcome of my febrile imagination. One of the newspapers carried reportage that travelling economy is a strict no-no for pigeons because they need space for clearing files while airborne, since that involves movement of the hand holding the venerable pen to put their priceless honorable squiggles. Plus they need quietude not provided in the economy section peopled by illiterate chatterati and twitterati. Obviously, they can’t be boxed in the same class as the population they serve.
Further, how could a Mephistophelian order stop pigeons, particularly the itinerant kind, to visit cooler climes in summer months on study tours, workshops/conferences/seminars abroad at Government cost when their heart and groin tell them so? Let’s face it. They’ve come out of the raging bushfire triumphant fighting hard battles – scarred in body and mind and soul – and each one of them needs replenishment and nourishment.
Worse: the complete ban on holding of meetings/conferences at 5-star hotels was the proverbial last straw. You can’t starve a pigeon and pigeonhole it! Which is why, I guess, pigeons of all shades – the homing statists, the itinerant wastrels, the irreverent withering-kind of stateless states – united and spoke as one: the fact that they’re beyond the pale of finmin’s hideous diktats. Of course, pigeons have their own rules of the game – above the lesser avian’s flights of passage. Of higher pedigree, they make their own rules, and would like to self-serve and self-preserve. Abstinence and asceticism are not exactly terms of endearment for them; far from it, they make mincemeat of these terms if someone had the temerity to throw such execrable objects at them.
Ahoy, the bell’s ringing loud in my mind – that famous infernal incident concerning Madame Roland. After all the bloodletting of the French Revolution of 1789 as she was whisked to the guillotine, she exclaimed those unforgettable words: “Liberty, what crimes are committed in Thy name!”
Heavens, did I paraphrase Madame Roland and caw implacably – “Austerity, what shams in Thy name!” – when I heard the orders reneged? We live in a nanny state in a profane world – tokenism notwithstanding – right? I simply join the children in chorus: Mike, Mike, where’s your head? Even without it, you’re not dead! while remembering the moral: Always care for your mother-in-law, you twit son-out-law! What the heck?
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
My Own Obituary!
Sudhansu Mohanty, (un)civil servant and occasional writer and (fifth!) columnist, passed away in his sleep yesterday after a brief illness. He was 54. He is survived by his estranged wife Shukla; his son Prayag who cleverly stayed away from him and today works in Mumbai; daughter Priyanka who (still in college) quietly suffered him (and because of being in college!), and his loving adorable dog Sheru (whose loyalty because it is canine is unmatched, guided by past memories of being a once-upon-a-time stray before adopting the Mohantys as his family). All of them suffered him – and in total silence.
Born in Cuttack, Mohanty was home-bred and home-spun – he graduated from Ravenshaw College. He obtained his Master’s from the Utkal University at Bhubaneswar. A bottom-of-the-pyramid student, he was accidentally (unconfirmed report says through nepotism) offered jobs successively at the Post-Graduate Department of Utkal University and then at Ravenshaw College, and thereby came to teach History at both his alma mater (Heavens!).
Later the same nepotism (allegedly) helped him clear the Civil Services Exams. Nepotism kept its tryst with him during his every elevation. The fact that he never missed a promotion is a testimony that Indian bureaucracy’s inefficiency is intact. At the time of his death he was the Principal Controller of Defence Accounts, Bangalore. Critics who rile against bureaucracy often fail to appreciate the boons of its inefficiency – and that an efficient bureaucracy is the greatest threat to human life, liberty, security, property, and prosperity.
Mohanty preached what he never practised. In a way, he was incapable of any practice. He was unwaveringly consistent – in keeping with his outlook and taste buds; never a namak haram he was true to the salt he ate, often with assorted evening namkeen and bhelpuri every day.
Nor was he capable of any work. He knew nothing of the department or Ministries he served. But blessed like a cat with nine lives he managed to survive though only till yesterday. Frankly, he was unconscionably late in dying, suffering as he was from a rare malignancy – carcinoid cancer – for more than two years; but the scourge, like him, was a slow coach and took its own sweet time, till one day the sovereign disease realized it was getting inordinately delayed for no earthly reason and the slow burn need be stoked, for it was time he died, and was bounded out. That’s how eventually – though reluctantly – he died in his sleep yesterday. Not to miss the point that Mohanty was keen to extend his life on earth through subtle contrivances like periodic medical check ups, intake of copious medicines/injections, consultation with eminent doctors, both at Narayana Hrudayalaya, Bangalore and at AIIMS, New Delhi. All bad things have to come to an end one day and so it was yesterday with Mohanty!
On official front, Mohanty will be remembered – apart from his classical inefficiency – for corruption, dishonesty and nepotism. Not a day went without a whiff of scam. But, to give the devil his due, he weathered every such storm manfully. The offices suffered, not he. He went about his life nonchalantly, his head up, nose in mid-air sniffing no scandals and putrescence. The fact that his olfactory didn’t work due to chronic deviated nasal septum, helped.
Mohanty will be also remembered for his pretentious and hubristic piffles that came out in his media writings. It is a tribute to his ingenuity he beguiled the Editors – The Statesman, The Times of India, The Indian Express, The Hindustan Times, The Pioneer, New Indian Express, The Telegraph, Financial Express, Asian Age, New Quest, The Illustrated Weekly of India, Mainstream – to publish his pieces that were impeccably unreadable, bereft of substance and couched in Origlish (Paradoxically Oriya, his mother tongue, the fraud knew little!).
Not only that. He wrote a series of babu-tales contained in three forgettable books: Babudom: Catacombs of Indian Bureaucracy (Rupa; 2004); Babulog: Vignettes of Indian Bureaucrats (Rupa; 2005); and Babuspeak and Other Stories (Rupa; 2007). The books though reprinted did not set the North-South-East-West Blocks (now the Ulan Bator Road!) on fire; even government departments – apt to assiduously patronizing books written by their own tribesmen and buying thousands of copies to help themselves expend the unrealistic budgetary outlays and also make the author/publisher happier and richer – gave such acclaimed win-wins a go by and refused to touch them with a barge pole.
Upon discovery of cancer, Mohanty was busy working on a book he called Anatomy Of A Tumour: A Patient’s Potted Dialogue With The Scourge. He tried to capture his experience of this rare scourge, as also his life after beaching himself in the profane world of ‘cancer’. The myriad experiences – of shock, of bafflement, of worry, of suffering and recovery from surgeries, of inconveniences and uncertainties, of positivism and philosophic worldview – are said to be captured in Mohanty’s account of the rogue tumour. The dialogue with the scourge is not continuous, but fitful, desultory – hence potted – and limited only to the ones he experienced, and the ones he understood amid the avalanche of medical terms and practices. Though he wished it was published during his lifetime, alas that wasn’t to be.
He had no friends. His childhood friends had deserted him like rats – not because they saw water in the ship but because they realized that the ship was not a ship in the first place! He never made friends in his later life. His relatives too despised him – particularly his in-laws. He was their son-out-law! Nitpicky, unspeakably adamant and petty, his worldview was governed by the halo of his own infallibility. Yet to be fair to him, unlike others in times of liberality, he sowed no such wild oats. But this was not due to lack of knack and/or effort. He had a roving eye but sadly drew a blank because ladies stayed off him – his woebegone and withering looks, and his sinful nature not helping his cause.
Perhaps he had a presentiment of his death: Just two days before his demise he had entered the blogosphere – maybe thinking it was his way to memorialize himself and leave his precious footprints on the virtual sands of cyberspace. A man so despicable you rarely ever find in reel life – let alone the real – and the spatial. But that was Sudhansu Mohanty – one of a kind, sui generis, if only for all the wrong reasons. Let his soul rest in peace. RIP, Old Boy!
Born in Cuttack, Mohanty was home-bred and home-spun – he graduated from Ravenshaw College. He obtained his Master’s from the Utkal University at Bhubaneswar. A bottom-of-the-pyramid student, he was accidentally (unconfirmed report says through nepotism) offered jobs successively at the Post-Graduate Department of Utkal University and then at Ravenshaw College, and thereby came to teach History at both his alma mater (Heavens!).
Later the same nepotism (allegedly) helped him clear the Civil Services Exams. Nepotism kept its tryst with him during his every elevation. The fact that he never missed a promotion is a testimony that Indian bureaucracy’s inefficiency is intact. At the time of his death he was the Principal Controller of Defence Accounts, Bangalore. Critics who rile against bureaucracy often fail to appreciate the boons of its inefficiency – and that an efficient bureaucracy is the greatest threat to human life, liberty, security, property, and prosperity.
Mohanty preached what he never practised. In a way, he was incapable of any practice. He was unwaveringly consistent – in keeping with his outlook and taste buds; never a namak haram he was true to the salt he ate, often with assorted evening namkeen and bhelpuri every day.
Nor was he capable of any work. He knew nothing of the department or Ministries he served. But blessed like a cat with nine lives he managed to survive though only till yesterday. Frankly, he was unconscionably late in dying, suffering as he was from a rare malignancy – carcinoid cancer – for more than two years; but the scourge, like him, was a slow coach and took its own sweet time, till one day the sovereign disease realized it was getting inordinately delayed for no earthly reason and the slow burn need be stoked, for it was time he died, and was bounded out. That’s how eventually – though reluctantly – he died in his sleep yesterday. Not to miss the point that Mohanty was keen to extend his life on earth through subtle contrivances like periodic medical check ups, intake of copious medicines/injections, consultation with eminent doctors, both at Narayana Hrudayalaya, Bangalore and at AIIMS, New Delhi. All bad things have to come to an end one day and so it was yesterday with Mohanty!
On official front, Mohanty will be remembered – apart from his classical inefficiency – for corruption, dishonesty and nepotism. Not a day went without a whiff of scam. But, to give the devil his due, he weathered every such storm manfully. The offices suffered, not he. He went about his life nonchalantly, his head up, nose in mid-air sniffing no scandals and putrescence. The fact that his olfactory didn’t work due to chronic deviated nasal septum, helped.
Mohanty will be also remembered for his pretentious and hubristic piffles that came out in his media writings. It is a tribute to his ingenuity he beguiled the Editors – The Statesman, The Times of India, The Indian Express, The Hindustan Times, The Pioneer, New Indian Express, The Telegraph, Financial Express, Asian Age, New Quest, The Illustrated Weekly of India, Mainstream – to publish his pieces that were impeccably unreadable, bereft of substance and couched in Origlish (Paradoxically Oriya, his mother tongue, the fraud knew little!).
Not only that. He wrote a series of babu-tales contained in three forgettable books: Babudom: Catacombs of Indian Bureaucracy (Rupa; 2004); Babulog: Vignettes of Indian Bureaucrats (Rupa; 2005); and Babuspeak and Other Stories (Rupa; 2007). The books though reprinted did not set the North-South-East-West Blocks (now the Ulan Bator Road!) on fire; even government departments – apt to assiduously patronizing books written by their own tribesmen and buying thousands of copies to help themselves expend the unrealistic budgetary outlays and also make the author/publisher happier and richer – gave such acclaimed win-wins a go by and refused to touch them with a barge pole.
Upon discovery of cancer, Mohanty was busy working on a book he called Anatomy Of A Tumour: A Patient’s Potted Dialogue With The Scourge. He tried to capture his experience of this rare scourge, as also his life after beaching himself in the profane world of ‘cancer’. The myriad experiences – of shock, of bafflement, of worry, of suffering and recovery from surgeries, of inconveniences and uncertainties, of positivism and philosophic worldview – are said to be captured in Mohanty’s account of the rogue tumour. The dialogue with the scourge is not continuous, but fitful, desultory – hence potted – and limited only to the ones he experienced, and the ones he understood amid the avalanche of medical terms and practices. Though he wished it was published during his lifetime, alas that wasn’t to be.
He had no friends. His childhood friends had deserted him like rats – not because they saw water in the ship but because they realized that the ship was not a ship in the first place! He never made friends in his later life. His relatives too despised him – particularly his in-laws. He was their son-out-law! Nitpicky, unspeakably adamant and petty, his worldview was governed by the halo of his own infallibility. Yet to be fair to him, unlike others in times of liberality, he sowed no such wild oats. But this was not due to lack of knack and/or effort. He had a roving eye but sadly drew a blank because ladies stayed off him – his woebegone and withering looks, and his sinful nature not helping his cause.
Perhaps he had a presentiment of his death: Just two days before his demise he had entered the blogosphere – maybe thinking it was his way to memorialize himself and leave his precious footprints on the virtual sands of cyberspace. A man so despicable you rarely ever find in reel life – let alone the real – and the spatial. But that was Sudhansu Mohanty – one of a kind, sui generis, if only for all the wrong reasons. Let his soul rest in peace. RIP, Old Boy!
Sunday, May 23, 2010
We Live By Designations, Honorifics
Have you ever noticed how designations, honorifics, ranks and awards are bandied about and hurled at us, lesser mortals, literally at the drop of a hat by the blessed souls who are the abled (or even otherwise) recipient of any of these largesse? It is a marvel that we have come to accept this as something given, and to flaunt these as the inalienable right of these august denizens. We have never tried to peel off this façade of pretence and see the real him/her.
I am not sure if I am making my point. Let me get more tangible to simplify things. A couple of years ago I was representing my department in a workshop held under the aegis of the Administrative Reforms Commission. I had two rather out-of-the-box ideas battling in my mind for long. One was getting rid of the tag of permanent civil service and making it contractual, renewable every five or seven or ten years depending on good performance. Only the exceptionally brilliant and dedicated could be tenured after proven track record. The other was – and this is what would raise the hackles of many of my confreres – making the public servants sit, not metaphorically but in actuality in glass-panelled rooms. This would be transparency – real and virtual.
I thought I could try out the second idea in an empirical sense before I went to the workshop. I called a friend holding a senior post in the government of India long-distance from home and announced my name to his Private Secretary (PS) and asked him to put me through to my friend. The PS asked me, “Where’re you speaking from?”
I said without any hesitation that I was speaking from my home in Bangalore.
He hemmed and hawed and then after a minute told me that “Saab is in a meeting” and called off.
Ten minutes later, I asked my PS to call the senior officer, and put me through to him. He came on the line pronto, whereupon I asked him if his meeting had got over. “What meeting?” he expressed surprise. “I’ve had no meeting. I’m alone – going through the newspaper and shooting the breeze!” I told him my experiment and the import of it: how designations and office (not home) are the open sesame to reach out to senior officers in government! We laughed heartily.
Don’t you smile mischievously – swearing pox-on-your-face mandarins in your throat. If you thought this happens only in the government sector, please wait awhile. It happens across the board in the private sectors as well unless of course your name rings a bell or the corporate honcho or his underlings is out to sell his ware, in which case he will promptly take your call. This is indeed a human malaise.
We, at least in India, live by designations, ranks, honorifics, awards all our lives – this life at least – well past our sell-by dates. All of us are at least aware of some famed (or otherwise) citizen bestowed an honoris causa doctorate from some assiduous university to flaunt the degree unabashedly before his/her name. In my childhood we grew up amused to learn one of the editors of a regional daily – who was not even a matriculate – who took periodic umbrage to his being referred and introduced to people without the mandatory Dr. prefixed to his name. Ahem, it was as though the august university who had conferred the degree was gratuitously offended! Box such impulses with the real doctorates recognized by the society for their inherent qualities of head and heart who never deign it necessary to prefix the honorific to their names and you know what I mean.
The problem then has to do with recognition or the lack of it. Even security or lack of it. Jobs – government or corporate – provide the prop of identity and security all our working lives; without it what is left is just the name, and what’s in a name that can’t command attention, unless you are one of the famed ones who needs no introduction? And remember: the more the culture of command and servility, the more the need for such psychological props. This is why you will see service officers hanging on precariously to the rank they last held before being transferred to the pension establishment.
I’ve often wondered why a retired gentleman should flaunt his last designation, retired tucked in small font within brackets, to the world when he has a name and a face to show up. I wouldn’t like to say it shows a complex – superior or inferior – but it is a complex all the same. I’m inclined to cross Oedipal and Electra here and call this – for lack of a better combo – Oeditra complex. It is a man’s or a woman’s passionate obsession with progeny – read life after the D-Day – that merits notice. My cousin, otherwise a sensible man who has much to rave about in terms of achievement in life beyond the olive green, can’t live down his rank even 33 years later though he was a Captain in the Indian army just for a few months before gracing civilian life after his short service commission stint.
Mercifully this malaise hasn’t invaded the civilian establishment as yet. Otherwise, we will have ubiquitous Secretary/Addl Secretary/Joint Secretary (Retd) of central and state governments and all kinds of designations different departments/establishments can conjure up, being flaunted to make their presence felt to stay visible. And amid this pell-mell of designations, ranks, all retired, the common man would be one hell of a confused soul – lost and seeking out his moorings. For Chrissake, can we rid this malaise – a malaise as dangerous as the red beacon atop every car tearing down the road with meretricious visibility to massage the uncertain ego of the precious cargo lurking inside it?
Before I end this piece, I must narrate the mother of hilarity as far as this genre of designations and awards go. This was when I worked in an office in Pune that looked after the personal entitlements of all army officers. One irate officer, riled with some perceived wrong in his account committed by my office, demanded to speak to me. He told me his name (of course his designation preceding it) and the awards conferred on him: VSM, Bar. He told me in the same breath that he was speaking from Gangtok and was trying frantically to speak to me the last few days. The line was faint and disturbed and I could barely hear him; I was praying the line held till he conveyed his problem. Notwithstanding my apprehensions and indeed his own as well, he hadn’t forgotten to mention his awards! Befuddled, I asked him innocently if he hadn’t had any AVSM or PVSM to go with his name. He replied blithely “No” and raced ahead, unmoved – his mind lost to my pun and barbed innuendo. So much for our sabre-rattling egos! Amen!
I am not sure if I am making my point. Let me get more tangible to simplify things. A couple of years ago I was representing my department in a workshop held under the aegis of the Administrative Reforms Commission. I had two rather out-of-the-box ideas battling in my mind for long. One was getting rid of the tag of permanent civil service and making it contractual, renewable every five or seven or ten years depending on good performance. Only the exceptionally brilliant and dedicated could be tenured after proven track record. The other was – and this is what would raise the hackles of many of my confreres – making the public servants sit, not metaphorically but in actuality in glass-panelled rooms. This would be transparency – real and virtual.
I thought I could try out the second idea in an empirical sense before I went to the workshop. I called a friend holding a senior post in the government of India long-distance from home and announced my name to his Private Secretary (PS) and asked him to put me through to my friend. The PS asked me, “Where’re you speaking from?”
I said without any hesitation that I was speaking from my home in Bangalore.
He hemmed and hawed and then after a minute told me that “Saab is in a meeting” and called off.
Ten minutes later, I asked my PS to call the senior officer, and put me through to him. He came on the line pronto, whereupon I asked him if his meeting had got over. “What meeting?” he expressed surprise. “I’ve had no meeting. I’m alone – going through the newspaper and shooting the breeze!” I told him my experiment and the import of it: how designations and office (not home) are the open sesame to reach out to senior officers in government! We laughed heartily.
Don’t you smile mischievously – swearing pox-on-your-face mandarins in your throat. If you thought this happens only in the government sector, please wait awhile. It happens across the board in the private sectors as well unless of course your name rings a bell or the corporate honcho or his underlings is out to sell his ware, in which case he will promptly take your call. This is indeed a human malaise.
We, at least in India, live by designations, ranks, honorifics, awards all our lives – this life at least – well past our sell-by dates. All of us are at least aware of some famed (or otherwise) citizen bestowed an honoris causa doctorate from some assiduous university to flaunt the degree unabashedly before his/her name. In my childhood we grew up amused to learn one of the editors of a regional daily – who was not even a matriculate – who took periodic umbrage to his being referred and introduced to people without the mandatory Dr. prefixed to his name. Ahem, it was as though the august university who had conferred the degree was gratuitously offended! Box such impulses with the real doctorates recognized by the society for their inherent qualities of head and heart who never deign it necessary to prefix the honorific to their names and you know what I mean.
The problem then has to do with recognition or the lack of it. Even security or lack of it. Jobs – government or corporate – provide the prop of identity and security all our working lives; without it what is left is just the name, and what’s in a name that can’t command attention, unless you are one of the famed ones who needs no introduction? And remember: the more the culture of command and servility, the more the need for such psychological props. This is why you will see service officers hanging on precariously to the rank they last held before being transferred to the pension establishment.
I’ve often wondered why a retired gentleman should flaunt his last designation, retired tucked in small font within brackets, to the world when he has a name and a face to show up. I wouldn’t like to say it shows a complex – superior or inferior – but it is a complex all the same. I’m inclined to cross Oedipal and Electra here and call this – for lack of a better combo – Oeditra complex. It is a man’s or a woman’s passionate obsession with progeny – read life after the D-Day – that merits notice. My cousin, otherwise a sensible man who has much to rave about in terms of achievement in life beyond the olive green, can’t live down his rank even 33 years later though he was a Captain in the Indian army just for a few months before gracing civilian life after his short service commission stint.
Mercifully this malaise hasn’t invaded the civilian establishment as yet. Otherwise, we will have ubiquitous Secretary/Addl Secretary/Joint Secretary (Retd) of central and state governments and all kinds of designations different departments/establishments can conjure up, being flaunted to make their presence felt to stay visible. And amid this pell-mell of designations, ranks, all retired, the common man would be one hell of a confused soul – lost and seeking out his moorings. For Chrissake, can we rid this malaise – a malaise as dangerous as the red beacon atop every car tearing down the road with meretricious visibility to massage the uncertain ego of the precious cargo lurking inside it?
Before I end this piece, I must narrate the mother of hilarity as far as this genre of designations and awards go. This was when I worked in an office in Pune that looked after the personal entitlements of all army officers. One irate officer, riled with some perceived wrong in his account committed by my office, demanded to speak to me. He told me his name (of course his designation preceding it) and the awards conferred on him: VSM, Bar. He told me in the same breath that he was speaking from Gangtok and was trying frantically to speak to me the last few days. The line was faint and disturbed and I could barely hear him; I was praying the line held till he conveyed his problem. Notwithstanding my apprehensions and indeed his own as well, he hadn’t forgotten to mention his awards! Befuddled, I asked him innocently if he hadn’t had any AVSM or PVSM to go with his name. He replied blithely “No” and raced ahead, unmoved – his mind lost to my pun and barbed innuendo. So much for our sabre-rattling egos! Amen!
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